Read it.

Medical officers who oversaw interrogations of terrorism suspects in CIA secret prisons committed gross violations of medical ethics and in some cases essentially participated in torture, the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a confidential report that labeled the CIA program “inhuman.”

Isn’t it amazing how often these “confidential reports” wind up being published by, oh, say, the Washington Post?

Let’s see: Any criticism for “gross violations of medical ethics” of doctors who deliberately kill unborn children? Nope, not here.

Read it.

But at the heart of the dispute is a struggle that is tormenting Republicans both in the state and nationally: whether to rigidly pursue an agenda dominated by conservative social issues or reach out to more moderate voters with a pledge to focus chiefly on economic concerns.

That little word “rigidly” reveals the unconscious bias that permeates what passes for journalism these days. An unbiased reporter wouldn’t have written it; an unbiased editor wouldn’t have permitted it. But we have neither any more.

Read it.

The coming shakeout in the journalism biz is one of the more entertaining situations to come down the pike. And, unless the government gets involved, the result is likely to be both surprising and useful.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

A new Oberlin graduate, James Brennan, has his costly Eurail Pass backpack tour canceled by his parents because his alcoholic father’s executive career is wobbling. Suddenly needing a summer job to pay for tuition in the fall at the Columbia Journalism School, he finds that a resume featuring his SAT scores and his Renaissance Studies major doesn’t compensate for his lack of any work experience. Nobody in Greater Pittsburgh, it turns out, needs a fresco restored. He winds up at the employer of last resort, the Adventureland amusement park.

Writer-director Greg Mottola, who helmed 2007’s comedy hit “Superbad,” explains the origin of his quasi-autobiographical film with an ingenuous snobbishness that would have annoyed and amused John Steinbeck. “I was talking with a bunch of writer friends, and I was telling them these embarrassing stories about a summer in the ‘80s that I spent as a carnie working at an amusement park … It was the worst job I’ve ever had… I should have had a good job—I should have been a tutor or gone to Manhattan and been an intern at a magazine or something respectable …”

Please note that Mottola isn’t, personally, a jerk. Judging from “Adventureland,” he’s an insightful yet gentle observer. That’s just the way people think nowadays.

Steve Sailer likes to look for, you know, facts.

Is Maureen Dowd a racist? Let’s find out.

Obviously, Dowd (a red-haired Irish Catholic who felt undervalued because she has brown eyes) is using the code terms “blue eyed” and “white bread bankers” to refer to Northern European Protestants. So, it made more sense to look up ancestry, religion, and self-identification directly.

Well, first, Maureen Dowd’s media stereotype about the financial world as dominated by an Old Boy’s Network of blond, blue-eyed WASPs is badly out of date. Finance has evolved from an old Relationship Model to a newer Transaction Model about who can make you the most money in a New York minute.

Imagine my surprise. Maureen Dowd, famous liberal establishment columnist, seduced by media stereotypes? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Read it.

Two American journalists detained last week by North Korean soldiers are likely to become bargaining chips for North Korea in its feuds with the outside world, according to analysts and politicians in South Korea.

They must have a higher estimate of their worth than we do. Shoot ’em — we got plenty more. In fact, we’ll ship you another jumbo-jet full and never miss ’em. Or better yet, keep ’em around for a few years, so that they learn what it’s like in a real dictatorship.

Read it.

If you’re interested in studying left-wing social movements like organized labor, civil rights or feminism, there are dozens of universities and colleges that have created special programs and research centers devoted to the subject. But hardly any similar institutions exist in academia for those looking for a place to study the right wing in America and abroad.

The distinction, of course, is that left-wing social movements are studied in order to promote them, while any study of the right wing will be after the manner of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Case in point:

Now, with backing from an anonymous donor, the University of California, Berkeley, where ’60s-era students stood atop a police car and ignited free-speech protests, is creating a Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements. According to experts in the field it is the first of its kind in higher education.

What kind of a study of right-wing movements will you get in Berkeley? Oh, sort of like the study of ebola you get at the Center for Disease Control.

The New York Times, of course, is totally clueless:

For more than 30 years the right in America has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into education and research efforts, lending support to efforts like establishing an extensive network of research institutes outside of academia and pumping up efforts to teach Western civilization and American history on campuses. But little effort has been expended toward studying the movement’s own history or putting it in a global context.

Let’s see: Richard Weaver, Russell Kirk, George Nash…. Naw, not much effort at all.

From which political direction the financing for this latest effort is coming is masked.

Oh, really? What a surprise.

The donor’s request for anonymity may be more to ward off requests for other contributions than for political reasons. The donation, $777,000, is relatively small, but enough, Mr. Rosenthal said, for the center to sponsor lectures, conferences and colloquiums; offer fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students; and publish papers.

No doubt on how to “fix” it.

Ms. Bacchetta insisted that researchers’ own political orientation was irrelevant. “It’s a question we always get asked,” she said. “But we really like to think of ourselves as scholars in the academy,” working on evaluating these groups without any agenda. “We’re not a political organization.”

Yeah. And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

Read it. Easier than you would think.

Read it.

Number one is that he’s black. I’ve got Sicilian in-laws with darker skin than he has.

Read it.

Six years after the publication of her blockbuster best-selling novel, “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” Audrey Niffenegger has sold a new manuscript for close to $5 million, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations.

Have you ever heard of this “blockbuster best-selling novel”? Neither have I.

After a fiercely contested auction, Scribner, a unit of Simon & Schuster, bought the rights to publish the new novel, “Her Fearful Symmetry,” in the United States this fall. The book is a supernatural story about twins who inherit an apartment near a London cemetery and become embroiled in the lives of the building’s other residents and the ghost of their aunt, who left them the flat.

Well, there’s a must-read. I must confess that the concept of inheriting an apartment is mildly interesting, but while there is a Neil Gaiman book yet to be read, I doubt that this one is going to be high on my priority list.

Read it.

Read it.

Not sure it will help in the long run — they’re just so clueless in the dinosour media — but at least the ship is beginning to turn away from the iceberg.

Jeff Jarvis is on the right track.

The complaint is that state government won’t get “covered” if newspapers die.

How about we crowdsource that? Every trendy issue has “interest groups” that pay attention to it. We just need to have these guys cover the local level like a blanket and blog about it.

And having transparent government is a good step in the right direction, as well. Any resident of locality X ought to be able to get every vote cast and every public word spoken by his representative(s) with just a computer and an Internet connection — like the ones available at public libraries.

Read it.

And the reason they do that is because people will buy it. But do trendy leftoid journalistas look into that question? Oh, no.

Read it.

Turns out, quite a few. So of course we have to let the rest of them go. (Huh?)

Read it.

Wouldn’t it be a kick to see a headline “Barack Obama urges Amnesty International to suspend political aid to the enemies of freedom”? Won’t ever happen, of course, but it’s a delightful thought.

Read it.

These images show members of the Ku Klux Klan as they want to be seen, scary and secretive and waiting in the wings for Barack and his colour-blind vision for America to fail.

Precisely so — “as they want to be seen”; here we see the leftoid media acting as their propaganda shills.

Today the Klan is a mere shadow of what it used to be and there are at least 34 differently named Klan groups. “They are a fairly low-rent bunch of people, many of whom use their local organisations as a way of raising money for themselves,” says Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama.

Ah, so they really aren’t that big a deal after all. The truth is that they’re not alive and kicking, they’re dazed and limping.

When was the last time they blew up innocent people? When was the last time they cut people’s heads off?

This shows the peculiar blindness of the leftoid media. They’d be smarter reporting on the Muslim “no-go” areas in their own country.

Steve Sailer joins the dogpile on Eric Holder.

America’s most distinguished man of science, James D. Watson, talked about race back in 2007. How’d that work out for him?

Read it.

A new guide for journalists warns against using terms which discriminate against people of a certain age.

Oh, for crying out loud. This is just absurd. Terms don’t discriminate. Using terms doesn’t discriminate. People discriminate. Old people are old people. They aren’t going to get any younger by not being called old people. Sheesh.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in Florida.

Read it.

How a bottle-blond former waitress and self-described “55-year-old virgin” with a taste for the good life became the financial messiah for millions of Americans might be a fun Lifetime original movie. Why the masses continue to invest their faith in Suze Orman in the wake of a financial meltdown she never saw coming is a more timely question. The answer is complicated.

Savor the irony of a writer for Slate magazine complaining that someone else doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Steve Sailer doesn’t quite say “you can’t make this stuff up”, but he doesn’t have to.

Read it.

And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

The Australian Prime Minister is a prima facie idiot:

KEVIN RUDD has denounced the unfettered capitalism of the past three decades and called for a new era of “social capitalism” in which government intervention and regulation feature heavily.

Anybody who thinks that during the past three decades “unfettered capitalism” could be found anywhere in the world ought not to be allowed out without adult supervision.

Read it.

Fooled me.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

Funny how Obama personally presiding over the giving away of $100,000,000 or so to improve Chicago school performance as chairman of the Annenberg Chicago Challenge didn’t do a damn thing for the test scores of Chicago black students, but his ascent to supreme power, his wonders doth work.

Funny indeed.

Read it.

An interesting article, but notice the not-so-hidden assumption: Unless you’re using the very latest black-turtleneck-and-pierced-body-parts technology, you’re living in the Dark Ages. Never mind that government technology, except in the military, is typically twenty years or so behind the “private sector”. The “six-year-old versions of Microsoft software” is XP, the same software most major corporations (including my employer) use.

Stuck in the next-to-last paragraph, however, is the most significant thing: ”

But there were no missing letters from the computer keyboards, as Bush officials had complained of during their transition in 2001.” So apparently the Bush administration doesn’t have the same proportion of arrested adolescents that the Clinton administration did.

Read it.

An interesting article, but notice the Hidden Assumption: Unless something is “supervised” at the federal level, it isn’t really “supervised”.

Read it.

Slow news day.

No one can ever bribe or twist

A noble mainstream journalist;

But seeing what they tend to do

Unbribed, there’s just no reason to.

Read it.

Slow news day.

Read it.

We used to have journalists. Those were great days.

Read it.

No more Bush to bash, apparently. We won, so it isn’t news any more.

Once upon a time, we had journalists. Those were the days.

Read it.

And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

Read it.

I was only mildly suprised, a few weeks ago, when I found ABC News peddling a fake video Q&A with President Bush, in which segments of his answers to two different questions were spliced together, out of order and out of context, with no indication that this surgery had been performed (“In president, out president, fake president”, 12/5/2008). Perhaps I should have been more indignant, but I’ve learned not to expect much in the way of journalistic ethics from broadcast news organizations.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

And I accepted, years ago, that even first-rank newspapers like the New York Times routinely fabricate virtual quotations in textual form, by splicing together out-of-context fragments from widely separated parts of an interview.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

Read it.

Note that nowhere on the entire first page of the article does it mention the word “annulment” or explain what the legal issue is.

We used to have journalists. Ah, those were the days.

Read it.

The solution proposed by researchers such as Harvard’s Thomas J. Kane and Dartmouth’s Douglas Staiger is not to raise teacher qualifications but to lower them—hiring “anyone with a pulse and a college degree,” Mr. Gladwell says—and then impose a rigorous yet flexible system of assessing new teachers in the classroom and weeding out the bad ones. That would mean adjusting teacher salary scales and ending automatic tenure, among other sweeping changes in the profession.

An idea so absurd that only an intellectual could believe it. We’re already doing the first part and the second part won’t ever happen while we have (a) Democrats and (b) education unions. Bzzt! Thank you for plaing.

Read it.

Those are certainly my priorities.

Read it.

Poor iddle babies.

Other tips in the Good Mental Health Rocks kit, which was distributed this month to about 30 schools in Queensland state, including apologising to students when necessary and asking pupils to conduct a “personal skills audit” where they focus on their individual strengths rather than their weaknesses.

Read it.

Really, these guys are as gullible as medieval peasants.

Read it.

If, of course, you accept their assumptions.

Read it.

Let us have a pity party….

OpenLeft blogger Chris Bowers went so far as to issue this plaintive plea: “Isn’t there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?”

Pardon me while I snicker. Dude, we’ve had Democratic administrations since Reagan left the White House. Where have you been? I guess he must be holding out for a statue of Lenin in the Rotunda.

Read it, and watch a “journalist” discover just what “progressive” policies do to leftoids like him.

Feel the love.

Read it.

Hey, those cabinets gotta come from somewhere.

Campaigners claim that modern methods of hunting cause the animals mental and physical stress, and that the chain should remove reindeer products from its shelves.

Somebody is unclear on the concept of “hunting”….

Read it.

Two powerful employee organizations are pressing the Bush administration to prove that in its final weeks, political aides are not improperly winning career government jobs at the expense of more qualified workers.

I don’t think this was written as a satire, since it’s in the Washington Post rather than The Onion, but I had to look to make sure, and I’m still not certain.

Read it.

Alan Scherr was an art professor with a comfortable life in the Maryland suburbs, but he spent 25 years studying Transcendental Meditation in a quest for something more. The search took him and his family to Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, where they shed their old life in Silver Spring and meditated in the complex of a New Age mystic.

So you know he’ll come to a bad end. If you saw this in a movie you would think, “Sheesh, what a hackneyed cliché.” And you’d be right.

As they mourned the deaths, family and friends struggled to comprehend how a man defined by his quiet spirituality had met such a violent end — along with the daughter who was raised in part by monks in the family-like atmosphere of the rural Synchronicity compound, 30 miles from Charlottesville.

Hint: There are evil people in the world, evil people who don’t give a shit about your search for peace.

Naomi, a high-achieving student who was home-schooled at the compound and planned to attend boarding school in New York next fall, was shot next, Lang said. “It’s hard for me to imagine the rationale for shooting a 13-year-old girl in the back of the head,” he added. “Naomi was the sweetest, loveliest, most innocent young girl.”

You don’t need to imagine it — just accept that there are others who do, who will gladly do it to you if given the chance.

Master Charles remains in India, where he escaped the attacks by spending 45 hours locked in his hotel room.

And that’s their response. if you close your eyes hard enough, you’ll become invisible.

And let’s not forget their enablers, people who write articles like this for the Washington Post.

Slate has a perfect example.

As a new middle-school teacher, I’m facing a challenge I never thought about before: assigning a list of school supplies for my students. My colleagues tell me that there’s a real downside to wooden pencils, since it gives students an excuse to get up every few minutes and use the pencil sharpener. But am I being environmentally irresponsible by asking parents to buy plastic mechanical pencils?

That’s the question. Answer at your leisure. Use both sides of the toilet paper if necessary.

Read it.

Look at the picture. Would you have guessed that this guy was ‘black’ if the article hadn’t said so? Seriously, I’ve got Italian in-laws that have darker skins than this guy.

Guys, guys, guys — Robert Mugabe is black. Thabo Mbeke is black. This guy is part Negro, the way some people are part Indian; i.e. just enough to brag about and not enough to matter.

Sheesh.

Read it.

Of course Democrats do this regularly and nobody raises an eyebrow.

Gee, this will raise the number of Republicans in the Civil Service from .01% to .015%. The horror….

Bias? What bias?

Read it.

It’s a hit piece, as one would expect from the New York Slimes, but one rarely sees anything about Phil Gramm in the news. The problems with de-regulation aren’t de-regulation but state officials who think “de-regulation” means “anything goes”.